The newspaper reports about how she was defeated and finished had already begun. At the same time her mother published a book, My Daughter Maria Callas, which led to a spate of articles implicitly, and in some cases very directly, accusing Maria of unkindness and ingratitude. Evangelia, with her amber hair drawn up in a chignon, and dressed, as always, with a prim, ladylike elegance, received the journalists in her seven-dollar-a-week hotel room near New York’s Puerto Rican district. At sixty-two she was still handsome, and now looked much more like her daughter than she had before Maria’s transformation. The book was her story of Maria’s life as told to Lawrence Blochman, and in it, as in her life, she continued to portray the injured and abandoned mother. She had explained Maria’s explosive temperament by tracing her tantrums to the concussion she had suffered after her car accident when she was five.
Evangelia, who had left her job at the Gabor jewelry shop, was for the moment living on the advance from her book. She had great dreams about its success, but as Maria refused to rise to the bait, or indeed make any comment on the book, it sank as soon as the first flurry of interest was over. “Where should I find a suitable husband?” Evangelia had said in one of her interviews. “I do not want to marry a man with no money. I’m poor already; why should I want to make myself poor twice over?” Evangelia’s obsession with money and fame, the very obsession on which she had brought up her daughters, showed through unmistakably. Maria, in spite of being determined to keep the door to the past closed, began to realize that she could not so decisively edit her life. She always saw herself as the victim of her mother and her childhood, and so would always be haunted by both. Maria’s relationship with her mother remained, right to the end, at the troubled center of her life. Her spectacular weight loss, her relationship with Onassis and her hostility to her mother were the three facts known about her, even by people who hardly knew her as an opera singer. The last was an emotion with which thousands could identify—among them many of those most indignantly denouncing Maria for her unnatural behavior.
Her godfather wrote to her, urging reconciliation with her mother, but Maria’s recent wish to heal rifts did not extend to Evangelia, and her longing to be a “normal” woman, now stronger than ever, did not extend to wanting a normal relationship with her mother.
“I don’t want to sing anymore,” she said. “I want to live, just like a normal woman, with children, a home, a dog.” Aristo was the key piece in this dream jigsaw of normality, and as the year went on, he spent more and more time with her—with as little explanation as when he had spent less and less time with her. His presence helped soothe her nerves and—even though she was not yet ready to put it to the test—helped her voice more than all the medicines and vitamins the doctors had been prescribing. It was like a new honeymoon, only this time, with Tina adamant about the divorce, it was almost official. The crew of the Christina were told to treat Maria in everything as la patronne, which they did with pleasure. Aristo never contradicted an order she gave, except once when he ordered that Tina’s portrait be put back after Maria had had it removed from the games room. The staff had warmed to her, especially after she adopted Onassis’ habit of going to the kitchens to taste all the different Greek dishes before meals and make both ecstatic noises and expert comments.
It was just as well she had no singing engagements; keeping up with the thundering pace of the relationship challenged even Maria’s enormous energy. It did not take long for Tina’s and Ari’s friends to accept that it was Maria who would now be at his side, and to welcome her like loyal subjects receiving the new consort. After all these years of obsessive concern with artistic standards—her own and others’—she was suddenly surrounded by people who cared much more for fame than for talent. For them the important thing was success, and their ambition to be on cruising terms with the successful. Here Onassis was unrivaled; nobody could surpass the guest list of the Christina. Greta Garbo, Ava Gardner, Marlene Dietrich, Cary Grant, Winston Churchill, former King Peter of Yugoslavia, former King Farouk of Egypt, the Begum Aga Khan, the maharani of Baroda, together with assorted barons, bankers and Beautiful People, had all at one time or another sailed on the Christina. And they had all sipped their cocktails at the main deck bar, which would be difficult to surpass for ostentation. It was a blatant reminder of Olympic Whaling, which had been one of Onassis’ massive enterprises: the barstools were covered with the skin of the scrotum of a mature whale, and whales’ teeth provided both the footrests and the bar rail, which was in addition engraved with scenes from the Iliad and the Odyssey.
Maria was fascinated by this buccaneering side of Onassis and from now on she too would live his battles with world oil interests, with Prince Rainier and even with the American and Greek governments. “She is the only woman,” confided Onassis to a friend, “with whom I can discuss business.” She loved the business conundrums on which he thrived and the baroque negotiations off which he fed. It was another way of saying that she loved him, because Onassis never really separated his business from his private life. The center of the Onassis empire was wherever he happened to be and the Onassis coterie was made up of his favorite mixture of business, the beau monde and show business. He had offices all over the world, but his own private office he carried in the inside pocket of his jacket—an old notebook fastened with rubber bands. Nobody used friendships and social contacts as effectively as he did to open all sorts of business doors. The Greek publisher Helen Vlachos called him “the top public relations genius in the world, and he concentrates on one client—himself.”
Being part of his life was being part of a whirlwind. Maria spent less time in Via Buonarroti during the first half of 1960 than she had spent even during her busiest working time. It was clear that Milan would very soon stop being her home. Together, they began looking for a new one. His divorce had still not come through, but they talked often about marriage at this time; it was something to be relished in prospect but still safely out of reach. Maria, who wanted a real home with big open fires where she could imagine little children running about, began looking at châteaux in France.
At the beginning of March, Ari left for Gibraltar where he was joined by Winston and Clementine Churchill for a cruise across the Atlantic. They had agreed—or rather Ari had decided—that Maria would stay behind, so as not to embarrass the Churchills who had been close to Tina and very fond of her. Whether he was cruising with the Churchills or going on long business trips to Argentina, America or Saudi Arabia, Maria was often left behind. The life of a sultan’s odalisque was a long way from the life of an international superstar, but Maria slipped into it as though she had been trained for the role.
Shortly after the end of the cruise, Ari arrived in Paris to talk with Tina. It was the last attempt at reconciliation, and one of the more desperate arguments he used was that it would give much pleasure to the Churchills. The last attempt failed, but something important was achieved. Tina agreed to drop her New York divorce suit and instead get one of the quick divorces that could be obtained in Alabama. Soon after the meeting, Aristo and Maria went together to see the Château du Jonchet in Eure-et-Loir. A month later he was divorced, but the château had not been bought.
In July, Maria made a hesitant attempt at a comeback to record Verdi and Rossini arias for EMI. The recording took place in London, at the Watford Town Hall, with Antonio Tonini conducting. It was a disappointment; Maria refused to give permission for its release and her self-confidence—so fragile at this stage—was damaged even further. But she left for Belgium, determined to go ahead with the concert she had agreed to give in Ostend. On the morning of the performance she woke up to discover that she had hardly any voice left. She called Peter Diamand who had arrived the night before. “Hallo, Emmanuele,” he said, convinced that the hoarse voice on the other end of the phone belonged to a male Italian friend. “It’s not Emmanuele, it’s Maria. Please come to my hotel. I don’t know what to do. I can’t sing tonight.”
Nor could she
. The concert was canceled, and a few hours later she left Ostend, terrified at the prospect of the two performances of Norma she had agreed to give in Greece in August. She had only agreed because of Onassis; doing what she knew would make him happy had become essential to her own happiness. As soon as making money had lost its challenge, Onassis had turned his eyes to Greece. Ulysses was his favorite hero. He identified with his wanderings and his tribulations, and he longed to be able to identify with his triumphant homecoming. Creating Olympic Airways was the first step, but he wanted to forge more links, to have more tangible proof that he belonged to Greece and that in some definable way Greece belonged to him. To have his established mistress score a triumph at the ancient and revered Theater of Epidaurus, and to be there to share the honors, would be another link with Greece. Maria, apart from wanting to please Ari, was herself beginning to feel the emotional call of her homeland. Greece was one of the bonds that joined them, and she valued everything that kept him close to her.
It was the strength that she drew not only from his presence but from knowing how important it was to him that made her overcome her fears and go ahead with Norma. They spent most of the month before leaving for Greece in Monte Carlo. That summer of 1960, that magically happy summer, he put everything aside to be with her; they were constantly together. Onassis, who had never in his life kept regular hours, had found in Maria someone who had no trouble living according to his peculiar clock that often reversed day and night. If he was spending the night doing business—or talking it, which he loved at least as much—Maria would be working on her Norma, unless she had joined the men, absorbing everything like a sponge as she had done all those years ago at the Athens Conservatory when she listened in on everybody else’s lessons as well as her own.
Many nights were spent at the Maona, Monte Carlo’s latest nightclub. Soon the story began to spread that the club had been named for them: MAria, ONAssis. In fact the club’s godmother was Tina Onassis, and it was she who had given it its Polynesian name. It was at the Maona with its Hawaiian decor that Ari and Maria were photographed dancing together. “It is impossible,” wrote the London Daily Express, “for them to dance cheek to cheek as Miss Callas is slightly taller than Mr. Onassis. But as she danced she has lowered her head to nibble his ear and he has smiled rapturously.” From the outside it looked as though their marriage was imminent. “I am fairly certain they will be married before the year is out,” a close business associate was reported as saying. And the marriage looked no less imminent from the inside—so much so that on August 10, once again at the Maona, Maria made public their intention to marry. The next day Onassis had dismissed the report as a fantasy and Maria’s remark as a pleasantry. It was a public humiliation, but Maria, as she had said herself, knew “how to wait.” Years later, after Jackie Kennedy had become the second Mrs. Onassis, Maria would admit bitterly that patience does not always pay. “I should have insisted that he marry me in 1960. Then he would have done it.”
Instead, the subject of their marriage was to become a regularly renewed disappointment for her. It would come to the surface, it would subside, it would swell again. For the time being, Maria was satisfied. “What Onassis offered me,” she was to say later, “was the feeling of being totally appreciated.” The little girl who had always felt that she was only loved when she was singing was at last loved whether she sang or not. Her singing never meant anything to Onassis except as a vehicle of her success. Soon it was to be the vehicle for what was for him a solemn ritual—Maria returning to Greece at his side to appear as Norma in Epidaurus.
On the first night, torrential rain made it impossible for the performance to begin. Twenty thousand men, women and children poured out of the stadium into cars, boats and buses as the deluge continued. They were back on August 24 for the new first night, and as soon as Maria appeared, they rose to their feet. Patriotic and artistic fervor combined in one of the greatest ovations Epidaurus and Maria had ever heard. If, as many would argue, her Norma was her masterpiece, then the night of August 24 must be considered the culmination of a career which had in many quarters already been written off. In the ancient theater which had witnessed the birth of Greek drama, Maria went beyond acting and opera and touched the hearts of thousands who knew nothing of either. From her very first notes, the audience was magnetized by the power she displayed. And yet there was a new tenderness, a real mother’s feeling coming through in the way Norma responded to her children. “Maria identified with Norma greatly,” said Zeffirelli. “In a way it was her own story. Maria, after all, is a high priestess—the high priestess of her art. Yet, at the same time, she is the most fallible of women. Very human. As Norma, Maria created the maximum of what opera can be. In a lifetime, one can see many great things in the theater, but to see Maria Callas in Norma, what is there to compare to it?”
By the end of the performance, the crowd at Epidaurus would have replied with one voice: “Nothing.” She had entered into Norma and exposed her inner turmoil in all its nakedness. She had carried the audience and herself into a realm far beyond everyday life or everyday art. Beneath the star-filled Greek sky, a crown of laurel leaves was placed on her head. And at the end of the applause, which at times had seemed as though it would never stop, it was not excitement or joy that filled the resonant silence that followed—it was awe.
For two men sitting side by side in the front row, the awe was mixed with pride. George Callas and Aristotle Onassis had met for the first time in Epidaurus. The Greek multimillionaire and the Greek pharmacist had spent hours talking. “He is dombros, your father,” Ari said to Maria—and dombros, meaning direct, honest, with no pretense, was a term of high praise in Onassis’ vocabulary. It was one of the contradictions in his character that, although he had a craving for the famous and the important, some of his happiest moments were spent drinking ouzo and talking to the simple Greeks, the islanders and the peasants he met wherever he went. He never lost the emotional capacity to relate to them on their own terms—which, after all, at a level not far below the surface, were his own terms too. Whenever he was in Greece, whether doing business or relaxing, he spoke the language of the marketplace. Maria loved speaking Greek with him, singing the folk songs of the taverna with him, picking and eating from his plate or following his example and eating with her fingers à la grecque.
In the euphoria of her happiness with Aristo, she forgot all caution, and although she had to sing a second Norma four days after her first performance, they stayed up late every night, and explored the countryside together during the day, spending hours in the scorching August sun. The result was that on the day of the performance she developed a high fever and felt so weak that the doctors refused to allow her out of bed. But now the famous Callas will took over. Nothing was going to stop her from honoring her contract; however high her temperature, she was not going to disappoint Aristo, Greece and the public that had four days earlier crowned her with laurel leaves. She sang and it was another triumph. In her new expansive mood, with Onassis’ prompting and to complete the all-around celebrations, she gave her fee of $10,000 for the creation of a Scholarship Fund for Young Musicians.
Then with her confidence regained she arrived in Milan where she recorded Norma at La Scala with Serafin once more on the podium. It was like the old days, except that she felt a new woman. And she was looking forward to working again with Visconti in a new production of Donizetti’s Poliuto, the opera she had chosen for her comeback at La Scala. But the days were over when she drilled and groomed herself like an Olympic athlete before the rehearsals for a new opera began. If she had been an instrumentalist, it might have been possible to combine a full-scale musical career with Ari’s life-style; she might, perhaps, have been able to maintain an outstanding artistic position and sustained their relationship—even though she had more than once said that such a relationship is a full-time job. What was not possible was to remain the queen of the operatic world and at the same time become the ex officio queen of the bea
u monde. There was little doubt what her true inclinations were; even when she was most deeply involved in the beau monde, in her heart she always remained an outsider. Its attraction for her, real though it was in the Maxwell days, would have been quickly exhausted if it were not for Aristo fueling it. It was part of his life; it had to be part of hers. But athletes, whether of the voice or the track, cannot stay up all night and practice the next day.
Yet we can hear in her last recording of Norma just how much her experiences with Onassis—both the joy and the pain—had enriched her art. John Ardoin, comparing this with her earlier recordings, stresses the depth of expression in the new one that transcends technical polish: “This Norma is more giving, more many-sided, more complex and drawn in finer lines. ‘Casta Diva’ is quieter, more mesmerizing. . . . Along with this, the fearsome Norma remains intact; indeed she draws a new strength through the gulf of contrast Callas meticulously establishes.” Maria clearly had a greater store of emotions on which to draw. Experience had enhanced the richness and depth of her feelings, but dramatic singing at these new exalted heights demanded a unique, and uniquely cruel, combination of the asceticism of St. Francis, the physical stamina of a marathon runner and the experience of life of Madame de Pompadour. For over twenty years, she had demonstrated both the asceticism and the physical stamina; but these strengths had been eroded by her new life. The day before rehearsals were due to begin, her voice was in poor condition, and she felt tired and apprehensive. Then the thunderbolt struck. Visconti was walking out on Poliuto in protest against the Italian government’s censoring of his film Rocco and His Brothers and his production of Giovanni Testori’s play, L’Arialda. “I’m finished with any artistic work in Italy,” he announced. At the same time, he sent a telegram to Maria explaining how it hurt him to abandon Poliuto, “above all because it prevents me from working with you, which is the work that gives me the greatest fulfillment. Although I apologize to you, dear Maria, I am sure that you will understand my state of mind and approve of my decision. I embrace you, as always, with all my admiration and immense affection.” Maria wrote back, full of sympathy, saying that she had been “counting the hours” waiting for them to begin working on Poliuto, but that she was even more distressed because he was being “tormented.”
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